Monday 18th May

Imelda, Rose, Jennifer, Caroline, Angela, Sepa, Jocelyn, Dorise with their certificates

Rose and Sepa

Rose, Suzzie, Caroline and Imelda with some old fart of a teacher

Nothing like being woken at 5am by what you think is the neighbours pigpig scratching itself on the house support posts for about a minute, then going into work and finding out we had an earthquake. The house was shaking rather well, a few things fell over, nothing broken though. Interesting, almost like living in Wellington again.

Graduation Day for the Students. TV, Newspapers, local radio station all there. Education is a big thing here, any opportunity to promote people achieving qualifications makes the newspapers, radio, tv, All the usual speeches, I had mine down to 2 minutes, which is a bit abrupt for here, an hour is more the norm, but as I said, today isn’t about me, it’s the Students day, and they’ve been listening to me for the past 3 months, they don’t need more.

Steve turned up, with Peter, our VSA South Pacific Regional Director, which was a really pleasant surprise. Lunch was a good mix of fish, chicken, salads, fruit, rice. After the outside people had gone, there was a big cook up for the work crew, I’ve got a good pic of Andrew cooking chicken on the barbque, cigarette in mouth, tossing chicken pieces. Definitely not your 5* restaurant hygiene, but the barbque flavour was terrific.

It’s going to be a bit quiet without the students now, I’ve got so used to Sepa laughing in the river every lunchtime, Suzzie bustling about always busy and smiling, Jocelyn who is the smallest lady I have seen here carrying huge loads on her head, all of them with wide smiles, and willing to do anything.

Rose, Imelda, Jennifer, Dorisse are part of the crew, so they stay on, Rose and Imelda I’d like to send to NZ for training, they are both really good workers, and keen. Jennifer I could send later, she’s too important in the Nursery for me to lose her at the moment.

It was a good day, the pics can be the story here.